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It's been a week since I restarted OS X, and it seems to be in a fairly happy groove. I do find that there is a gradual deterioration in performance over the first two or three days after a fresh restart, but after that things seem to plateau.

The current system status as I type this is: • 12 active swapfiles using 960MB of disk space • 61 open applications & system processes • Pageouts since last restart: 269056.

However, toward the end of last week some major memory issues began to manifest in the Finder. I found that double clicking on a folder icon either on the Desktop or in the Dock resulted in no response, and if I clicked on icon text labels to highlight and copy or change them, the text would disappear, although clicking somewhere else would restore it.

I was working in a couple of applications at the time, one of them in Classic Mode, and they continued to work fine, and since I had a gaggle of documents open in several applications as well as a bunch of browser windows I was referring to, I really didn't want to restart the computer, since it would have taken at least half an hour to get everything back to where I had it.

I vaguely recalled reading somewhere that Force Quitting the Finder could resolve this sort of issue, and I decided that was worth a shot. The Apple Menu was still responding normally, so I opened the Force Quit dialog, selected the Finder icon, and clicked the button. All the icons on the Desktop disappeared and then quickly reappeared. The non-response and other anomalous behaviors were gone, and the other applications I had open were unaffected. That was five days ago, and the Finder is still working smoothly. Beats restarting.

Around the same time Safari had begun refusing to respond to the Hide command, and quitting/restarting it also restored normal behavior.

Another elementary thing I discovered while looking something else up recently is that if you're working in two programs and switching back and forth frequently, pressing Command >Tab will transfer you to the program you were in most recently, which means that pressing Command>Tab again takes you back to the application you started in. Consequently, you can bounce back and forth between two programs with a quick keystroke shortcut rather than rooting around in the Dock. Very convenient.

With the Command key held down, pressing Tab sequentially will also cycle through all open applications, while Shift>Command>Tab will cycle through them in reverse order.

Another related ttrick is that you can use the Command>Tab shortcut while dragging something from one program to another even after the mouse button has been pressed. Select your item and then press Command>Tab until the desired destination program comes forward--then drop.

Simple stuff that speeds things up.

G5 & Utilities

From Michael Tappeiner

My father-in-law just received his 1.8Ghz G5 with 1Gig of RAM and it is an awesome computer, that I would love to have. Although before I spend my hard earned dollars on a G5, I'm going to hold out for a dual processor model because I think you really need two processors to tap the true potential of OS X.

Anyway's my gripe is that there is no possible way to run utilities like Disk Warrior, Norton or Tech Tool without booting from another hard drive or from a partition on the hard drive because the utilities CD's won't boot and you can't boot into OS 9. Apple says something about running utilities from another computer in TargetDisk mode which just sounds really stupid to me and way beyond the scope of the average user. This strikes me as really dumb! I can't believe Apple would do something like this.

At least they should partition the hard drive from the factory so that their customers could install another copy of the OS for just this purpose. Forgive me for my ignorance but is it possible to partition the hard drive without messing up the installed system? This is my only route unless I want to go buy a serial ATA drive and install another OS on it.

Sincerely Michael Tappeiner

Hi Michael;

Running utilities from another Mac in Target Disk Mode would probably work, but it's a rather clumsy workaround, and not everyone has a second Mac conveniently handy.

I would be all for Macs shipping with partitioned hard drives -- I can't abide using a machine with a single volume drive. Tried it for three weeks with this iBook and it nearly drove me nuts.

FWB makes a couple of utilities -- Hard Disk ToolKit and Partition ToolKit -- that can partition hard drives without erasing them, but alas, they only work booted from the Classic OS, and not in OS X Classic Mode. I don't know of any OS X native products that will partition without erasing.

I guess your alternatives are to erase the drive and run the system restore CD (after first backing up your personal files, buying a second HD as you suggested, or trying the Target Disk Mode workaround.

Charles

Firebird 0.7 browser review

From Alex Morando

Hi Charles:

You said:

"Other areas where FireBird compares unfavorably with > Safari are that it has no Tab-close buttons on window tabs, requiring you to use Command>W to close tabs"

You can also use the close tab button to the right of the tab row. In my case, cmd-W is easy enough.

Firebird is very extensible, supporting themes, plugins, and extensions:

http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/

Through extensions, I've gotten Firebird to use mouse gestures (which Cocoa apps can also do through Cocoa Gestures) (although I still haven't figured out how to make it recognize the middle mouse button). One feature that didn't make it to the Mac version uses the scroll wheel (with the cmd or alt key) to quickly change the text size. This feature is very useful for those with vision problems or viewing websites with small fonts.

"Even more annoying, there is no progress bar or other indication > that a page is loading except for a tiny rotating icon in the page tab, which is a significant consideration if you're on a slow dialup connection like mine.

Actually, there is a progress indicator, but the default toolbar does not have it. You can right-click on the toolbar, select Customize, and then drag the Activity indicator to the toolbar. It functions like the "trademark" icon in all other browsers. I'm not sure what it is - it looks like some sort of Klingon weapon :-)

It seems that my favorite browser Camino may be going by the wayside (the fact that one of Camino's main developers now works on Safari does not help). I'll be kicking the tires on Firebird. It's my default browser on Linux boxes.

Alex

Hi Alex;

Thanks muchly for the tutorial. :-)

Doh - I saw that red "X" button and wondered absent-mindedly about it, but never got around to checking out what it did. Works great! I like it better than close buttons in the tabs themselves, which are easy to hit inadvertantly.

The little "Klingon crescent weapon" activity indicator works fine too, although I would still prefer a progress bar (see Katherine Sears-Lent's letter below). Now if they could just add Services support....

Charles

Firebird

From John Oswald

Great browser. I did find a bug though. Try option clicking a link to save it to the desktop or closing a window with a movie running in it. i saw this happen on an earlier version as well so they will probably fix it soon

John Oswald

Re: 10.2.8 possible problem & Firebird Article

From Katherine Sears-Lent

Dear Mr. Moore,

Thanks for trying to help with my trackpad disappearing act.

A member of my user group, (Savannah MUG), Thomas Mokwa offered me the idea to download a beta shareware application that gives lots of option to trackpad users. SideTrack:
http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/index.html

I had that installed before and when I had the problem, I removed it, thinking that could have been the culprit- not 10.2.8. Maybe I did not get rid of all the pieces properly. I looked into it, and it turns out that is exactly what happened!

Originally when I was removing the Side Track pieces, I got literally sidetracked, and when I resumed, I went looking for Side Kick, a different application altogether (a little partner for AppleWorks). Anyway, I assumed it was 10.2.8 since I had also just done the update that day before.

I was so thankful that the user group fellow brought that up, because I never would have thought to check it again.

BTW, Firebird has been my default browser for several months now- Having just read your article, OS X Odyssey 428 - Checking Out Mozilla Firebird 0.7 XUL-Based Browser: Friday, October 17, 2003, I wanted you to be aware of a few enhancements you may like- a lot!

Download the extension, Tabbrowser extension and select advanced. You will see ‘show progress meter in tabs’. This provides a progress bar right in the tab itself. I love that! In fact the Tabbrowser extension offerings blow away any feature that Safari may offer; with the exception of my very missed, favorite feature, Autofill. Also, you can save your tab sets to refer back to, have URLs load in the background, in unique tabs and so much more!

Note: I am using Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1. I tried .7, but reinstalled 0.6.1 as .7 has a known bug. When clicking a URL for another app, (email for example), this is the error mssge:

XML Parsing Error: undefined entity
Location: chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul
Line Number 46, Column 1:

For me, that is a show stopper, so I will hold with 0.6.1 for now. It is still the best browser I have tried. Vote on this bug here:
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=210553

Do play around with the other extension offerings that interest you. I have several now such as QuickNote- A notepad with Post-it like features QuickTools- Adds Quick Tools menu items. Trivial- Adds miscellaneous buttons. Things they left out- All the things an Options panel shouldn't be. and of course, Tabbrowser extension- Improves tabbed browsing.

Also try the Thunderbird email client. My husband has switched to that from Entourage and I will likely too, perhaps after the next update. It lacks multi sigs, which I am fond of.

Take Care-
Katherine E. Sears-Lent

Hi Ms. Sears-Lent;

Glad that you tracked the problem down, so to speak.

I have posted news blurbs about SideTrack in Shareware Beat and The 'Book Review, but haven't sampled the software yet. Thanks for the report.

Thanks also for the FireBird info. I'll check out that Tabbrowser extension. The lack of OS X Services support (I'm now addicted to Services) will keep be using Safari as my main surfing browser for the present, but I do relish FireBird's speed.

I have experimented at some length with ThunderBird, and agree that it is preferable to Outlook Express. The non support for copying email header info to the clipboard is a fatal shortcoming for my purposes, however. Still tough to beat Eudora for all-round email management!

Charles

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

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